Message in a Bottle

November 2nd - 3rd, 2023

God is so personal. These were the verses and pictures I read on my phone on the night I left Hong Kong for San Francisco…

The first image immediately reminded me of the Golden Gate Bridge — which is, of course, in San Francisco. The imagery of the ‘tears in [God’s] bottle’ were also timely: California holds lots of memories of Bruce and me, so I knew I would need God to comfort me on this trip.

When I landed, Ethan, my ‘godson’ whose family lives in San Francisco, sent me a photo from his local Costco, where he was shopping:

When he saw this enormous stack, he couldn’t help but think of all the butterfly stories I’d told him. As I looked at his photo, it occurred to me that the ‘bottle’ theme from my Devotional of the Day might be coming through already. What a quick delivery! Ethan had no idea about the devotional, so I told him and we had a good laugh. I thought it was sweet that we could connect over something like this. Ethan was officially part of the ‘butterfly movement’!

His photo was also a reminder of Butter the dog (see chapter, All Things Work Together, p.53), the many occasions we’ve enjoyed Butter chardonnay at family celebrations since Bruce's passing (see chapter, Celebrate Good Times, Come On!, p.143), and of one of the few times Bruce accompanied me to a church service. On that occasion, we went to hear Pastor May speak upon her appointment at Union Church. She preached on John 2, Jesus' first miracle, in which he turned water into wine. Out of all of Jesus’ miracles, Bruce like this one the most.

As I reflected on this memory, it felt like God was saying to me: “I will turn the water of your salty tears… into Butter chardonnay!” This thought characterised my stay in California: it was a good, healing few days. I stayed at a longtime friend’s home and, while I was there, I made time to drop by our old San Francisco home (I stayed there occasionally in the early days of our marriage, when Bruce still owned it).

Our old home in SF

Exit Through the Gift Shop

November 12th, 2023

Ha! God is always so humorous with me. He knew I didn’t want to carry an entire Butter chardonnay bottle in my luggage, so He sent me a different kind of “butter” — one I couldn’t resist! I was looking through a gift shop in the airport, before my flight to Miami, when I saw this display. I ended up buying the dusty rose bottle you can see in the photo below.

The more I thought about this exchange (large, stacked crates of Butter chardonnay for a tiny, red bottle of nail varnish), the more it felt like God wanted to tell me something: where it had once been enormous and overwhelming, my ‘bottle of sorrow’ would become small. It also felt meaningful that this Butter bottle had flown all the way from London: another reminder of God’s tender love and comfort as I travelled.

God had clearly ordained this journey from beginning to end. Before I even left, He spoke in His still, small voice about San Francisco (via the Golden Gate Bridge image),and assured me that He knew my sorrow and would help me deal with it. He even had a plan to transform my tears into something colourful and manageable.

I want to end this story with an encouragement: God still speaks today… but not always in the way we might think or expect at first. He might speak to you through an email, through a daily Bible verse, or even through a message in a bottle! As long as we have eyes to see and ears to hear what He is saying and doing, He will be faithful to guide us and hold us in His way.